In article <bvhnn3$2gfo$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, cherie@cs.pdx.edu says...

>from www.counterpunch.org

January 27, 2004

An Interview with Bruce Cockburn

"We're All Lied To"

By MIKE FERNER

Oriental Palace Hotel, Baghdad

Recently I interviewed singer, songwriter and musician,
Bruce Cockburn, at the end of his weeklong visit to Iraq
hosted by the American Friends Service Committee. As I
write this introduction in a Baghdad hotel on Karrada
Street, a diesel generator roars on the sidewalk below,
providing power for an electrical system savaged by a
decade of sanctions and two wars. The generator is
drowned out only when U.S. fighter planes and
helicopters roar overhead.

Cockburn's latest release, "You've Never Seen
Everything," is one of over two dozen discs the Montreal
artist has released, including "Breakfast in New
Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu," "Dancing in the Dragon's
Jaws," and "Trouble with Normal." Cockburn had a few
choice comments on some of his favorite topics and then
we got down to some questions.

On what he hears from people in Iraq:

Increasingly, people will tell you that they feel one
dictatorship has been replaced by another; that they
have more freedom of thought now than they had before
but they don't have freedom of movement.

On truth in advertising:

We were all lied to. The Iraqi people were all lied to.
And I guess we're still being lied to. I mean, Tony
Blair is still trying to say there were weapons of mass
destruction even when the Bush administration is
admitting little by little that there weren't. It's so
much bullshit and at such a price.

Q: Why are you here in Iraq?

A: Officially I'm part of a delegation that includes
Bishop Gumbleton of Detroit and we've come here to
assess the humanitarian situation in Iraq. I just wanted
to see it up close and I want to understand as much as I
can of what's going on here. I don't think the media has
given a very fair reporting of what's happened, although
the Canadian media has generally been better than the
U.S. In a way, that's an after-the-fact rationale,
because as an artist, I feel it's my responsibility to
witness things and try to grasp them. Once in a while I
get lucky and my understading of those things become
songs. That's not a given and I think it would be self
serving to the point of obscenity to come to a place
like this looking for song material, but I hope that a
song can be inspired by what I see

Q: During the U.S.-backed war against the government of
Nicaragua in the 1980's, you wrote the song "Rocket
Launcher." if it's fair to say that that was an angry
song, a) what were you angry about when you wrote it;
and b) do you feel as though you'd write a similar song
today?

A: "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" was written about a
particular time and place. The situation that inspired
it called for outrage--at least that's what it elicited

>from me. I think it's fair to say that outrage is an

appropriate response. Had I had a rocket launcher on
that particular ocassion, I don't know that I'd have
used it and I'm glad I didn't because I didn't have to
make the choice.

The situation was that I'd spent three days in a couple
of different Guatemalan refugee camps in Chiapas, in
southern Mexico. All the while we were in one of them we
could hear one or more helicopters patrollling the
border. The week before we were there and the week after
we left, this helicopter strafed the camp--as if these
people had not suffered enough with the incredible
violence they were fleeing in the mountains of
Guatemala. The eyewitness accounts they told us were
just horrendous...their food ration was only three
tortillas a day... no medicines...but still, sitting
there with courage and a capacity to celebrate. When
they found out I was musician, they brought a marimba
that they had carried in pieces from their
village...they all got out their best clothes, the kids
danced, and they had a party.

It just made me cry and still does when I think about
it. That spirit they showed in face of such incredible
difficulty...the implications of that helipcopter going
back and forth, made me feel that the people in the
helicopter had forfeited any claim to humanity and I
just felt this incredible outrage...I felt it much more
strongly than the Mayans did. I didn't hear a word of
anger from anyone about anything they'd experienced, but
I felt it. After I got out of the camp I was sitting in
my hotel, drinking and crying and writing that song. For
me, writing the song was just to get it off my chest and
I wrestled with whether to record it or ever perform it
in front of anyone. I thought if I don't, that's self
censorship which is inherently bad, but also, the
feelings I had were probably not very much different

>from those that anybody of my background would have had

in those circumstances, so it seemed important to share
it with people of my background--with my audience. I
think most people understood that it was not a call to
arms but a cry of outrage. Yes, it was cathartic for a
lot of people. I remember meeting Charlie Clemons, a
doctor and a Viet Nam vet, when Rocket Launcher was
being played on the radio. I felt a little sheepish,
because here was this guy who'd been in a war, and I had
not, and he'd decided to be a pacifist. I felt kind of
weird knowing he was in the audience when I was singing
this song, and I asked him about it later. He said, "It
was what we all wanted to hear!"

I don't know if I'd ever write another song like "If I
Had a Rocket Launcher." That experience (in southern
Mexico) was really my first experience with the real
third world. That first time in the refugee camp was my
first experience seeing such poverty up close like that.
Since then I've seen it lots of times in lots of parts
of the world, so things don't hit me with quite the same
vividness after the first time. But that being said,
there's a lot going on here to be outraged about,
certainly, among them the hypocrisy of the American
administration who claim to be Christians and operating

>from a basis of faith, and who are conspicuously not

loving their neighbor in this country. It's hard to get
words around the enormity of what's going on here, and
I'm not sure if I have much perspective on it yet, but
clearly the war in Iraq was not about freeing the people
of Iraq from an onerous dictatorship. It was not about
weapons of mass destruction. It was not about a
relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. That's
obvious without coming to Iraq, but it's doubly obvious
when you come here and you see who's paying the price
for this war. Aside from the American taxpayers, who I
don't think fully realize the price they are paying,
it's the people of Iraq that are paying--the increasing
numbers of homeless people living in bombed-out
buildings, whole families strugling as best they can
with 60% of the population out of work, the economy just
absolutely shattered and nothing being done to
rehabilitate it...who knows what the future holds, but

>from the point of view of the aveage Iraqi it's clear

that everything being done is about Bush's potential in
the next election. Every Iraqi I talk to says that. It's
very clear to them that it's all about electioneering.

Q: What difference does it make if an artist expresses
anger or dissatisfaction with political policies?

A: In terms of commenting on government policy, I'm a
citizen talking, not an artist. I'm a citizen of Canada
but also a citizen of the world and obviously, the
decisions made by the United States effect all of us
greatly. As an artist I feel it's my job to grasp
whatever I can of the human condition and distill it
into some communicable form, through song, and in so
doing, create a vehicle for the sharing of experiences
among people. Everybody filters a song through their own
experience when they hear it. But allowing for that,
there's still a common bond especially in a live
performance, where you have a group of people in a room
together and the song then becomes a vehicle for the
sharing of their feelings in that room at that time. I
think that's a really important part of what I do. With
that in mind it's down to me to try to grasp as much of
the human experience as I can and keep that distillation
process going.

Q: What do you feel you've gotten from the people of
Iraq while you've been here, and what do you hope to
give?

A: Well, I'd like to think I can offer some help to
people who can use it. We will have made a great step
forward if we can communicate the humanity of people
here to the human instincts of friends back home. Too
often I think North Americans see Iraqis as a bunch of
camel herders. I don't think people have a very good
idea of who lives here. And who lives here are just like
the people of North America--doctors and lawyers and
architects and farmers and laborers and people of all
walks of life, just like home. The educational system,
until the sanctions took hold in the early 90's was just
exellent, so there' a lot of really well educated people
in this country. But that's another sore point with the
Iraqis--none of that education and technical ability is
being tapped by the Americans at all. Iraqis aren't
being tapped for anything other than menial jobs and
security forces in the case of the police. There are
people here in this country perfectly capable of
rebuilding the country if they just have the resources,
but they're not being allowed to participate.

It always gives me a big boost to be in a place like
this. It kind of reminds me of what I'm here for, if I
was in danger of forgetting it. I've been touring from
June until mid-December, and have another tour starting
two days after I get back. In that context, it's sort of
easy to lose sight of the real world sometimes. So just

>from a personal point of view it's been very beneficial

to be here and keep my feet on the ground. Being face to
face with the need of the homeless people we spent time
with yesterday, and being in the presence of the clear
manifestation of earthly power--these are sobering
things. The human spirit, the resourcefulness that
people show...the way people have used these bombed out
building to try and create some semblance of home for
themselves is at once impressive and terribly touching
because they're working with so little. Even there,
there's pride. People have gone out of their way to make
it as pleasant as they possibly can and something to
give a sense of privacy. The fact that people are
willing to die for these horrible hovels...what do you
make of that? On one hand it's a testimony to the human
spirit, to people's willingness to hang on to their self
respect at all costs. I guess why I brought that up is
that issue of the human spirit is the biggest gift that
the Iraqis could ever give me...to be reminded of our
capacity to get by in even the worst of circumstances.
On the personal level that's what I hope to take back.
Of course I hope to have some effect beyond my personal
interest and what I can take back. But whatever else
happens I know that much.

Q: As an artist that actively addresses his concerns, do
you find it frustrating that more of your colleagues
don't use their craft in a similar way?

A: I can't make choices for anybody else. I think it
would be more useful if there were more people in the
arts willing to be heard on these kinds of issues--but
there are a lot of people who are. I mean, if I start
feeling alone, all I have to do is look at Ani DiFranco,
and I know Ani feels alone sometimes, too. We all do.
But there's two of us that are doing this kind of thing
on a regular basis. There are other people who come and
go from it on specific issues. Around the landmine
issue, for instance, we did a series of concerts for
five years starting on the anniversary of the treaty
banning landmines, that were the brainchild of Emmylou
Harris. There was a sort of changing cast of characters
in these concerts, including songwriters like Mary
Chapin Carpenter, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earl, Nancy
Griffith, John Prine, Emmylou, me, Chris Kristofferson--
there were a lot of people. There's Jackson Browne,
who's always working on stuff behind the scenes or
publicly, to mention a guy who really spends his time on
things that matter. They're around. So while on the one
hand you've got the artists who are being celebrated on
MTV, hustling products, and up to their neck in cross-
marketing, there's a lot of us that are actually
offering something that I consider to be of greater
integrity. But I don't claim to be able to judge the
choices that other people make. It's not for me to say.
I don't know what their background is or where they're
coming from; what colored their experiences to make them
make those choices. I think if you're going to call
yourself an artist--and there's a lot of things we can
call ourselves--we can be entertainers or this or
that...I grew up in an era when art was considered to be
something that had value that transcended its commercial
value. I feel that way about it and I feel like what I
want to do with my songs is something that isn't about
the commercial value it has...that's my choice.

Mike Ferner spent the month of February, 2003 in Baghdad
and Basra, with Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-
based campaign to nonviolently resist economic and
military warfare against Iraq. He returned recently to
write about the current situation in Iraq. He is a
former Navy Hospital Corpsman and a member of Veterans
for Peace. He can be reached at: mferner2003@yahoo.com

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